“What are you doing here?” I cringed. “Sorry, that came out wrong. I just didn’t expect you.”
“No, no, that’s understandable after the visions this morning. I came to say sorry. For not helping you.”
“You don’t need to apologize for that.”
“I know. But I wanted to catch you before you left, because maybe there’s another way I can help.”
My hopes didn’t stir, too accustomed to disappointment, but my curiosity did. I might have feared remaining in Shearwater any length of time, but in the vision we’d been dressed for Fae’s wedding, so I wasn’t overly concerned the both of us would drown until then.
That didn’t make the invitation without its own dangers. I liked spending time with Kessian, and the longer I did, the more I likedhim. It wouldn’t be good for my heart to linger long.
Lunaris pointedly put the kettle on to boil.
“All right. Come in for a cup of tea.”
I prepared to forgo any myself since I only had the one mug, but I opened the cupboard to find a second.
Lunaris’s magic was of the wild variety. It wasn’t limitless, but it also wasn’t fueled by tithes like mine. I might have dismissed her conjuring a cup for Kessian and not Fae by telling myself I’d been feeling too sick tomy stomach for tea at the time, having just seen the wraith outside Kessian’s bedroom window, but Lunaris had a way of conveying her intentions, and I would only be half correct.
The cup was dainty, blue, with a galaxy of stars painted inside like a smattering of Kessian’s freckles. She even fluffed the dining booth’s cushions to make him feel more welcome.
Kessian watched all this wide-eyed before accepting the mug floating in front of him. “Er, thank you, Lunaris! What a charming host.”
She flicked her curtains at him flirtatiously.
“I did see in your visions that your familiar became your camper van, but I didn’t realize she could do all this.”
“She’s trying to make you feel welcome because I’m bad at it.”
“Not bad at it. More, unprepared. You could say I have bad timing.” His eyes dropped down to the opening of my house coat, sticking to my chest hair. “Though from where I’m sitting, it’s verygoodtiming.”
I’d managed to flirt back smoothly that first night I’d met him, but then I’d been three whiskeys deep, and I hadn’t known him long enough to develop fluttery feelings.
I was having fluttery feelings.
“Let me go get dressed,” I said.
“If, and only if, you insist.”
I rushed down the short hall, hoping Kessian didn’t notice how my bedroom door was painted the same color as his, because I didn’t need him to know that night had left such an impression on me that my familiar redecorated because of it.
In my room, Lunaris immediately flung an outfit suggestion onto the bed for me.
It was just a shark-fang necklace I’d gotten at the beach when I’d first left home. I’d bought it because I liked running my finger over the serrated edge.
“Be serious,” I said.
She pulled out my gray sweatpants. No underwear.
“Lunaris.”
If it was possible for a sentient camper van to throw down an alternate outfit in a huffy manner, Lunaris managed it, but this one at least made me decent.
I emerged in the best-fitting pair of jeans I owned, and an oversized cable-knit cream jumper that could fit both Kessian and I comfortably inside it.
I wasn’t trying to look good for the boy in my living room, but I wasn’tnottrying to look good for him. A double negative that irritated my brain, but felt appropriate when Kessian made me feel two brain cells short of a fruit fly.
“That jumper looks so cozy,” Kessian said, feet kicked up on the poof Lunaris conjured for him.
